VET News

Skilling the Nation for the Future

Minister for Skills and Training, the Hon. Brendan O'Connor addressed the National Press Club last week:

It’s exactly fifty years since the Whitlam Government commissioned Myer Kangan to provide advice on the development of technical and further education in Australia.
 
His report to the Government established the foundations for a modern TAFE sector, built on the traditions of our finest state technical schools and trade colleges.
 
But with a vision for something bigger.
 
The Report made the link between vocational education and training and national prosperity, and for the first time this link was comprehensively acknowledged by a Commonwealth Government.
 
Significantly, the report was tri-partite. It brought together employers, unions and educators, State and Territory governments.  
 
The report was of such seminal importance to Australia’s national development that one of Australia’s exceptional TAFE colleges bears the author’s name.  For the first time, significant Commonwealth funds were invested through grants to the states to build new technical colleges, create new and more facilities, and train new teaching staff.
 
It was the birth of Australia’s modern vocational education sector.
 
It was a moment of promise that should have created a great national skills training sector, equal in status to our university sector, as is the case in many other countries.
 
But if we’re being honest, the policies of successive governments have cast TAFE, community providers, and the VET sector adrift from its purpose of national prosperity.
 
The VET sector has endured underfunding, de-regulation, loose rules of VET market entry, a lack of national cohesion and an obsession for competition at the expense of collaboration.
 
In the face of this neglect, and policy missteps, the sector has performed admirably – but we can do better. 

Read more here.

Date posted Oct 12, 2023